


The Fixing of Percy Jackson's Attitude

by lightlytoasted_attackroll



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: A Little Bit Smutty, Alternate Universe - College/University, Burnplay, F/M, Manipulation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Neck Kissing, POV Percy Jackson, Professor!Annabeth, Will get smuttier in future, Work In Progress, student!Percy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightlytoasted_attackroll/pseuds/lightlytoasted_attackroll
Summary: Professor Chase rules her lecture hall with sweet words and an iron fist, and Percy Jackson, struggling with his work, has caught the attention of the latter. Kind woman that she is, Chase takes it upon herself to help Jackson get back on track with his work and, as a bonus, assists him with remedying a few attitude issues along the way. Although resistant at first, Percy's guilty fantasies soon catch him off guard, and he finds himself neck-deep in an uncomfortably involved situation, full of burns, tingling lips and the cruel threat of blackmail keeping him there.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	1. Excellence

It happened on Wednesday evening. Essentially, in a Wednesday detention, which is weird, since I’m 20 and I go to Olive University, not secondary school. Nonetheless, I was left stranded in Biology Lab 2, in the Green Wing, after hours, in order to ‘make up for my evident lack of focus’. Basically, torture. I’d been in this situation a couple of times before, but never alone, as I was now. _Likely because no one else panicked enough to start writing about octopodes on their Chemistry test_ , I thought, letting my eyes flit dejectedly around the room, whisking over every detail apart from…her. Professor Chase, the stone-cold lecturer who’d sooner slap you with a six-session after-hours catch-up plan than actually coach you through some of the harder aspects of the course one-to-one. The one who’d barely glanced up from her work whilst she handed me my paper and quietly commanded, “See me after class, Jackson.” The one who, somehow terrifyingly noticing that I’d stopped working, now looked up at me lazily, like a cat, her piercing gaze focusing into my eyes.

“Jackson. Have you finished your work?”

I started and dropped my head back down to my pad of paper, scowling into the spidery scrawl that covered it, and at the smudges of blue ink crawling up my wrist from the side of my hand. Writing sucked. With dyslexia, it sucked even more. One might even assume that a teacher would consider _not_ assigning a writing task to a dyslexic student, due to the well-known suckage quality it had.

Unfortunately, with Professor Chase, no such dice. My eyes were aching, my vision was blurry from staring at the page too hard, and my hand resembled a particularly tense crab. It fucking hurt. It wasn’t fair; and, angry at Professor Chase’s faint smirk and her predatory glare, I made the questionable decision to nudge the situation from ‘uncomfortable’ to ‘Hellscape’. With a capital ‘H’.

“No, _Miss_ , I haven’t.” I muttered audibly into my page, spitting the words with enough spite that I was momentarily on top of the fucking world. And then everything went to shit and the top of the world became a very unpleasant place to be and, if possible, the room got even _less_ fun to be in.

I could swear that the AC went into overdrive, because the temperature plummeted about ten degrees in a second. Even the plastic skeletons, the ones that decorated the lab that I was serving my sentence in, seemed to intake a shocked breath. The air went still and I felt about a million tonnes of panic pressing down on my shoulders at once, forcing me into a hunched, defensive stance. That, shockingly, had been a mistake.

Now, if you hadn’t guessed, Professor Chase liked to be referred to as ‘Professor’; not ‘Mrs’, not ‘Ms’, and _definitely_ not ‘Miss’. But I, in my infinite wisdom, had decided to retaliate against the lecturer who had already made it clear that she had no problem with punishment…which must require at least a few missing IQ points.

As I came to terms with the freshly frigid situation, the worst thing wasn’t the nervous smile that had suddenly plastered itself across my face, a habit from ages ago that I thought I’d broken, or the fact that I’d frozen like a deer in the headlights of a truck. It wasn’t the sudden, sinking knowledge that things were about to get much, much worse. No, the worst thing was the slight tremble in her hand as she stopped writing. The way she slowly placed her multi-coloured _Bic_ pen, the red ink pushed down, by the side of her stack of papers. How she pushed her chair back from the desk with excruciating deliberation and stood up with a slight exhale, smoothing the few wrinkles out of her shirt as she did. The worst thing was that the shirt was a faint blue, the colour of the sky in spring, which worked really well with the dark trousers she was wearing. The worst thing was that every little detail of her sent a spike of desire into my body. Picking up, of all things, her coffee mug, with exaggerated care, she began to stalk towards me across the lab, and every step on the wooden floor rang in my ears and knocked on the door to the darkest parts of my mind.

“Jackson. What have I said before about calling me ‘Miss’?” she asked softly, tracing a rounded, light-pink-painted nail around the tip of her mug. The scratching sound was unbearable in the silent room, fighting its way into my ears amongst the thumping of my heart, which had apparently risen into my throat, given how difficult it was I was finding it to breathe.

I said something really intelligent and cutting, like “Uhmguh.”

As she reached the other side of my desk, she chuckled emptily, her laugh like a faint tinkling of wind-chimes. Insincere. Foreboding.

“I distinctly remember you being in the lecture when I made my…preferences clear, no?” She shot me a glance that tingled with cruelty. “I expect my students to obey the rules. Speaking of…” She trailed off, holding the mug by the handle in her left hand and reaching down to swivel my pad of paper towards her with the other, pursing her lips in an expression of mock disappointment. “Oh, for pity’s sake, young man, I expected better.”

My hands unclenched, my shoulders slumped, and I let out a shaky breath I wasn’t aware I had been holding. I wasn’t even able to look in her eyes, which I knew would be boring into my head, fuming with a quiet rage. More than detention, more than unfair teachers, I hated feeling stupid. It legitimised every word ever spoken by my ex-stepfather, by the bullies in my old school, by my old form tutor who’d looked at me, sighed, then handed me my awful letter of recommendation to Olive University. Hopelessness, shame and frustration waged a war in my head, giving me a headache and a sick stomach.

“I…I’m sorry Professor Chase. It was an accident, I won’t do it again, I promise. And I’m sorry that my work wasn’t good enough, it’s just that-that-that my dyslexia makes it really difficult, and I’ve been writing for hours, and, and-” Too late, I realised that I’d allowed myself to start rambling, and was on the verge of tears. As I fought back the droplets that jostled to spill over onto my face, a soft hand, still carrying a faint, yet insistent memory of the coffee’s heat, brushed against my cheek.

In that moment, the world shrunk to that hand and me. I froze, confused and scared and…well, okay, I’m going to come clean here. I wasn’t proud of it, but the weight in my stomach wasn’t pure terror. Yeah, she was an asshole. But she was undeniably hot. And the asshole part of her…kind of fed into that, at least for me.

“Apologies are good, Mr Jackson. I’m glad you recognised your mistake. However, as to excuses…” Suddenly, grabbing my chin, she turned my face up to hers, wringing a shocked gasp out of me. Her pointed gaze pierced right through me as she studied my face. She leaned closer to my ear, and murmured, “Excuses are pathetic.”

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach and my entire body tense up. I’m pretty sure I gulped audibly, judging from the low chuckle from Professor Chase as she pulled away from me, mouth slowly curling into a dangerous smirk. 

And it’s not like...like, I’ve you know, thought about it, before, and I’d be lying if that thinking didn’t sometimes turn into daydreaming, or even...fantasising. But confronted with that smile, that cruel twist of the lip that promised knife-sharp brutality, I was beginning to rethink my kinks. Of course, my body was having no qualms about it, hot, and cold, and hungry all at once, making me want to look deeper into that silvery gaze, lose myself and let her do whatever she wanted to me. But that’s besides the point.

She spoke, and I could hear the cold malice dripping off of every word.

“I’ll have you know, young man, that I don’t accept excuses in my class. I expect effort. I expect…” She paused, letting her eyes wander up to the ceiling as if she was pondering on the right word. Gaze snapping back to mine, she smiled coldly. “I expect excellence.”

She let go of my face, and I basically collapsed, as if her iron grip had been the only thing keeping me upright. Gathering myself, I searched for words, for shouts, for threats, knowing that I could’ve had her fired, had her hounded out of the University, but nothing came. My mouth flapped open and closed like a fish out of water, dry as the Sahara Desert. Appraising me with a smile, Professor Chase continued, seemingly satisfied with my inability to defend myself.

“Now that we’ve established that you’re sorry, I believe we need to remedy this attitude of yours, hmm?”

The sharp spike of anger at the implication that I was simply being lazy vanished almost as quickly as it had reared up. I must have nodded slightly without meaning to, because her grin grew wider and the hard edge to her voice morphed into some kind of…sickening excitement, an excitement that mirrored the anticipation swirling in my own gut.

“You’re tardy, talkative, rude and, quite frankly, you do not try hard enough in your assignments. And judging from _this_ ,”, she suddenly growled, slamming her hand down onto the re-sit test paper I had spent the last hour covering with chicken-scratch, “You aren’t responding to traditional punishment.”

At that point, I was essentially frozen with fear. You know that feeling when you’re getting told off, especially by a teacher? Like all your internal organs are attempting to abandon ship, and the sudden vacuum in your chest makes you want to curl up into a ball and do nothing until it’s all over? Yeah. That was it, right there. Sucked me right back into the past, into every gut-wrenching ‘discussion’ about my behaviour I’d ever had with a teacher. I suddenly felt very, very small.

“So I suppose, Mr Jackson, that we now have a question to address,” she intoned sweetly, hitting me with another dose of tonal whiplash and locking her eyes with mine. It took all my willpower not to crumble, but I held her gaze angrily, trying to stretch a thin layer of righteous frustration over the bubbling mass of panic that was boiling my insides.

“Yeah?” I responded, surprising myself with how strong my voice had sounded. “Well, I couldn’t give a shit. You’re an asshole, and I try my hardest, so I don’t care what fucking question you have to ask.”

Stupid bravery is a talent of mine. It’s gotten me black eyes, social exclusion and, just last week, a very uncomfortable run in with a wire fence and the fire department. But I immediately felt like I’d outdone myself there. Swearing hadn’t been something I’d really done…at all, really, before this incident, but Chase brought it out of me. Doing it from an already vulnerable standpoint, and in the face of a woman who looked very much like she was in the mood to do something terrible to me, in retrospect, seemed more stupid than brave.  
Spoiler alert - it was.

I didn’t even register the pain at first. For a split second, all I noticed was that Professor Chase had moved suddenly, moving one hand back to grip my chin, and the other, carrying the coffee cup, down to (presumably) the desk. It was only a moment, but that had been enough time for me to look into Chase’s eyes and wish I’d never been born.

Then the burning started.

As the pain splashed into existence, hissing intensely like a caustic acid, I realised that the base of the mug, a white-hot circular brand, had been pressed into the back of my right hand, pinning it onto the desk like a dissection specimen, boring into my skin with white hot gouts of agony that were too sudden, too extreme at first to react to. Staring at those steel irises, now molten with rage, was the moment it all became far, far too real and I gasped with pain, and my fingers started flexing and unflexing instinctively, my arm attempting to pull back from the heat. Professor Chase spoke in a voice I’d never heard before – crackling, broken, low with anger and desire. Inhuman.

“What are we going to do with you, Mr Jackson? What _are_ we going to _do_?” she spat, forcing words through gritted teeth, her lips still distorted into that horrible grin but her voice still sickeningly light. Even though my mouth was open, and my face was screwed up in pain, I was silent, partly dumbfounded, partly grasping at any kind of power I could hold onto, even as my hands lay passively limp on the desk. Seemingly unsatisfied with my response, she continued, grinding the mug deeper into my hand, pushing bones around with a series of sharp, painful pops, hissing the words with a vindictive passion. “Can you feel that, Jackson? Can you feel that attitude catching up to you? You’re a disgusting brat and someone has needed to put you in your place for a long, long time!” Punctuating the end of her sentence with a slap across my face that had made me feel like throwing up, she glanced down at my hand, now writhing under the burning weight of the mug, and all the anger had seemed to leave her face. Eyes wide and body stock-still with the shock of the slap, I saw her lips purse, her eyes cool, and her hand lifting the coffee cup away slowly.

Exposed to air, the burn smarted and stung, making me smother a whimper as I felt the skin protest against the sudden cool. I tried flexing my fingers gently, almost on instinct, and yelped pitifully as the raw skin slid over the bones in my hand, stretching and beginning to bleed. My nose filled with the smell of coffee, and my head began to spin, the world around the edges of my vision beginning to blur and melt.The world kept whirling around, my urge to vomit growing, the sting of the slap barely a gentle nudging of pain compared to the smouldering agony of my branded hand. I managed to choke out some sounds, a jumble of ‘pleases’ and whimpers, trying to anchor myself in some kind of action, against the unrelenting throbbing of the wound on my hand and the sharp scent of blood that had now joined the fray. Somehow, I found my voice again and stuttered as I tried to push away from the desk, trying to escape, get as far away from the smell of coffee and blood that was making me retch, from the burning on my hand, only to be held still with her firm grasp on my wrist.

“Y-you’re crazy. You can’t do that, it’s-it’s illegal, I’ll get you f-fired, stay away from me!” Words tumbling out of my mouth, scared and desperate, apparently did nothing to that calm, disturbing interest she had in the angry-red mark now plastered on the back of my hand. Suddenly, the room felt far too large, like an expanding vacuum had sucked all of the air out of my lungs, and I was now left flailing, helpless, doomed. “P-please Professor Chase. P-please let me go, I-I-I can’t, I’ll be good, I’m so sorry.”

Silence, the room still yawning hungrily around me.

“Professor?”

A quiet voice, seemingly from another world with how faint and murmured it was, floated out from Professor Chase’s mouth.

“You appear to have spilled coffee on your work, Jackson.”

For a moment I was stunned by the comment, still feeling the grip around my wrist and the burning on my hand. Then I looked, confirming that, yes, splashes of coffee now decorated the lines I had been writing for the past hour. Her eyes flicked back up to mine, and her nose wrinkled, squished as her mouth formed a soft, pleasant smile.

“No matter, young man, you’ll simply have to make up for it. Let’s say...bring me one hundred lines by tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll consider the work done, hmm?” The words were laced with an underlying bitterness, like dark espresso under a blanket of cream, but she was still speaking in her teacher-voice, clear in the awful silence of the room, as if I’d simply made a small mistake in class. As if nothing had happened.

“W-what?”

“Did you not hear me?” she sighed, almost imperceptibly tightening her grasp. “I said that you’d need to do more work, since you’ve made a mess.”

“But-but-but…my hand,” I muttered, pathetically, flicking my eyes between the offending mark and Professor Chase’s terrifyingly neutral face, “It’s burned.”

“Oh,” she frowned, turning her head to look at it more closely, “Jackson, how did this happen? That looks…” pausing as her face flashed with a grin so quickly that I couldn’t be sure if I’d seen it or not, “Painful.”

_What was she talking about?_ It was hard to think like this, caught-off-guard and scared, but I wracked my brain until it suddenly made awful sense. It’s a well-known fact that this particular room had a faulty CCTV system. She was playing dumb to rub my face in the fact that she was in the clear to do whatever she liked, and that hardly anyone was going to believe the word of upstart Percy Jackson over the trusted Professor Chase. _Fuck_.

Sneering faintly, she continued. “Look, Jackson, hurting yourself is no way to get around work. You either do it, or you find some _other_ way to convince me that you’ve learned your lesson.” At this, her voice softened into a low, throaty tone again and she abruptly leaned forwards, as if she was struggling to contain herself. Her gaze fixed on my lips, which suddenly went dry, and her words fell like singular drops of water into a pool: isolated, cold and each with a mounting suspense. “Do you think that’s happened yet?”

The seconds that passed like that seemed to span the width of a year or two each. Each moment seemed to drop with a heavy weight, thudding dully against the silky softness of the stifling atmosphere that surrounded us, cast in this strange, tense position, heavy with potential, dry with anticipation, vacuous with possibility. Her face barely moved, aside from a faint shudder that rippled over her features.

So, I mentioned earlier that I was regretting my kinks? Yeah, my brain had decided to pack up and go home by now, which left my body free to do whatever stupid shit it felt like. So that’s when I met Professor Chase halfway, and lurched forward into perhaps the clumsiest kiss I’ve ever attempted. And by fucking God, was it worth it. 

At first, yeah, it was a messy smash of my lips against hers, and I’m pretty sure I sorta...missed the centre of her mouth? But, that didn’t matter since she almost immediately grabbed a fistful of my hair from the back of my head and pushed back into the kiss, and everything exploded into fireworks. Pain and pleasure meshed and entangled and sparked and blazed in a whirring buzz of sensation, taking over my body and forcing a groan out of my throat and into the kiss. Lips moving over each other, over teeth, constantly dancing across a threatening knife-edge of biting and making out, moans and gasps spilling out of my mouth between kisses, and hungry growls crawling out of hers as it pressed against my lips. My right hand burned incessantly, and Chase’s fingers twisted tightly into my curls, yanking me like a puppet towards her. It seemed like an eternity passed like that, blood rushing in my ears like a river, the sensation of being kissed in the passive case, the sensation of being _owned_ , swamping me and making this terrible, _terrible_ idea seem like the best plan in the world. I felt the bite coming before her teeth nipped at my bottom lip, but did nothing to stop it, whimpering as another part of me erupted into a sharp stab of pain, and my lip was pulled away from me as Chase slowly broke off from the kiss, relaxing her grasp on my hair. Before she released her hold on my lower lip, she caught my eyes, which had flicked open in pain, and I saw a stomach-wrenching satisfaction spreading across her face. Her golden hair had begun to frizz up around her head, combining with her reddened cheeks and heavy panting to make her the picture of passion - dishevelled and hungry and gleefully in possession of something to sink her teeth into. 

As she moved away, the mists of whatever dumbfuck energy I had been channeling parted around me, and I was left drenched in a cold sweat, shivering slightly in the sudden realisation of how fucked I was. Lips still slightly parted, I tried to process the situation, sparks of sensation still swirling and dancing in my mouth and on my hand, but couldn’t get further than the moment I had initiated the kiss. As I kept bumping up against it, a repeating _Oh no_ began to ring in my head, getting louder and more all-consuming as I felt the vast expanse of shittiness that was very much waiting for me. 

I could feel the heaviness of the air in the near-silence, broken only by the sounds of shuffling fabric and a soft, slow exhale from Chase as she raised her hands to her hair and smoothed down the waving strands that had come loose in the moment, deconstructing the halo of spun sugar that had floated about her head. She broke eye contact to close her eyes and raise her head to the ceiling, allowing the silence in the room to settle lightly like unspooled lengths of silk. Keenly feeling the sudden separation, a whispered whine tried to leave my mouth before I swallowed it down and tried to still my hands which were starting to twitch again. Returning her eyes to mine, and gently resting a hand on top of the burn she’d made, she paused a second before speaking in a slow, measured voice.

“I have never,” she said, starting to press down on my hand, “Seen such impertinence from any of my students. I asked you to prove to me that you had learned a lesson, but it appears that you have done _anything_ but.” Sternly looking down at me, she tapped her chin and frowned. “I just can’t figure you out Jackson,” she continued, leaning closer to me, placing more and more weight onto my hand, which was making me wince and bite my lip to hold back a building groan, “You don’t appear to be getting...better, no matter what I do.” At this point, my hand was once again screaming with pain, the fractured skin complaining against the pressure of the heel of the Professor’s hand, and I was drawing a blank, my mind fuzzy with pain. Seemingly waiting for a response, she gazed at me expectantly. Suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to answer her, my words, when they came out, were stumbling and halted, my voice rising in pitch as the pain intensified.

“I-I-I p-promise Professor, I’m sorry. I don’t kn-know what happened, please- _fuck_ -please, I’ll be better I promise _it hurts so much fuck please Professor._ ” I sank my head to the desk, gasping, pinpricks of tears reappearing at the rims of my eyes, and dissolved into a pleading mess, barely able to think straight.

Her voice came from above me, cruelly laced with smugness.

“As I said before, young man, apologies are good, but they aren’t all that I expect. Can you remember,” she intoned conspiratorially, leaning back down near my ear, “ _Sweetheart_ , what it is I need from you?”

I was in too much pain to even react to the pet name, not that it really measured up to the rest of the situation, and rationality had been thrown to the side of the road long ago; it was without resistance that I gasped out my answer.

“Excellence P-Professor.”

“That’s right, Jackson. And excellence isn’t something that you can achieve easily, is it? You have to...earn it.”

I nodded rapidly and groaned.

“So you’ll need to work harder. And would you look at that,” she said, lifting her hand to gently stroke the mark she’d made on my hand, “We’ve got something to test you with.”

Icy shards of fear began to build across my chest and veins, lancing down towards the screaming mark on my hand. 

“You want me to...keep working, Professor?” 

“Yes, and it had better be good; I’m giving you another chance to do the test - and at home no less. Aren’t I generous, Jackson?”

“Yes Professor, thank you Professor.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled again, and my shoulders relaxed a little bit at the sight.

“Good boy.” She cupped my cheek and kissed her teeth teasingly. “Well, Jackson, despite your injury, I think you had better be getting home, hmm? Detention is over…for today, at least.” And with that, she stood up and walked back to her desk. She began rifling through the papers calmly, organising them into neat piles and packing them away in her satchel, with its beads and brown leather straps, and that singular silver owl charm that was now glaring directly into my eyes as it swung from the strap. Such an odd bag for Professor Chase, but it suited her. It was weird - despite the terrifying situation, I was noticing little details, forming little, insignificant opinions as I did. I guess I was trying to distract myself. It wasn’t working - the shameful warmth I felt at being called “Good boy” was mixing horribly with the sinking realisation that writing with my newly marked hand was going to hurt like hell, and wouldn’t be ignored.

She turned to give me one last glance before she strode out of the room, cocking her head, eyes glittering with faux concern and barely disguised satisfaction and my chest tightened with anticipation. “And Jackson? Don’t forget to bring your work to me tomorrow, or we’ll have to extend your punishment further, okay?” My only response was to nod dumbly and watch as she strode out of the room, leaving me to the black hole of shame and tingling excitement that was gnawing away at my insides.


	2. Focus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Percy's ADHD lands him in more hot water with Professor Chase, whose irritation at his refusal to follow orders quickly shifts into something more sinister. Falling further into a rapidly inescapable situation, Percy begins to question whether his feelings for Chase (and her feelings for him) might be more than self-destructive fantasies. Beginning to slip into a strange, passive headspace around Professor Chase, his grip on the situation as a whole seems to be slipping, and he walks out of his most recent encounter with a little more than he'd bargained for.

It was the screaming goats that broke me.

After watching the video, a result of my ninth consecutive decision to let auto-play take the wheel instead of looking down at the practice test I was supposed to be doing, I felt the sick feeling in my stomach curdle like spoiled milk, and that familiar rush of shame and regret filling my chest. God, I hated myself sometimes.

“Stupid,” I muttered angrily, trying to ignore the beading, red-hot tears forcing their way to the edges of my eyelids, “Stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.”

I’m sure you can tell by my stunningly varied insults, but I really did need to study, and yeah, keeping my laptop in my room was probably a bad idea. But in my defence, I  _ did _ need to look at Professor Chase’s email for the topic list I was supposed to be revising. And I really thought that I’d be able to resist the temptation and actually knuckle down to some proper revision.

Unsurprisingly, my ADHD and YouTube had other ideas. Wincing as I glanced at my alarm clock – how had two hours gone by so quickly? – I clicked the ‘X’ on my browser window, ridding myself, at least for now, of the impressive archive of tabs that I had amassed.  _ Goodbye screaming goats _ , I thought glumly, watching the video player disappear and reveal the email, staring at me accusingly from the screen, accompanied by the on-screen clock reading 1:00 am.

_ Fuck. _

Seven topics to cover, all of which I felt I could probably  _ talk  _ about pretty well, but none of which wouldn’t cause me to go as-white-as-a-sheet if presented in an exam question. And unfortunately, yes, exam questions did make up the vast majority of Professor Chase’s testing style. Shocker, I know.

Staring angrily at the screen (in full knowledge that it would do me no good, thank you very much) I let out a long, sad exhale and my shoulders slumped. My heart felt heavy, and that ball of curdled-milk-shittiness had now grown to the size and density of a small boulder. Worst of all, my hands felt limp and hot and useless, just as they did every time I got frustrated or upset, ever since…yesterday evening. Ever since the incident. At the thought of  _ that _ particular memory, the floodwalls cracked, then shattered, and I started crying. Burning tracks into my cheeks and demanding attention, tears spilled over and burrowed their way into my mouth, making me taste the salt of my own idiocy. The red mark on the back of my right hand flared up painfully, filling my nose with the reek of coffee, and my ears with her voice, honey-sweet and yet hard, like steel wrapped in silk.

_ What are we going to do with you, Jackson? What are we going to do? _

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don’t know how I had made it to bed last night, but I suppose I must have dragged myself there whilst sobbing uncontrollably, because I woke up fully clothed (read: like a tramp), and with an itchy face and puffy eyes - a telltale sign of either psychosis or crying myself to sleep. I’d prefer to deduce the latter, but given that I still couldn’t get that damn kiss out of my mind, despite the aching pain on the back of my hand, I wasn’t too sure anymore. 

Swinging my legs out of bed, I caught sight of the offending mark and stared at it, suddenly overcome, paralysed. The sun streamed in through the window, and I didn’t move, just stared into the swirling wrinkles of dead and dying skin, the angry red having dulled to a deeper red. My room was a mess and I had Uni today, and I didn’t move, just let silent tears drip onto the burn and a growling emptiness shift around in my gut. It was only when my roommates knocked on my door on their way out that I started suddenly, the last dregs of self-pity and helplessness sloughing off of me in favour of the spitting, frantic napalm of panic. Whirling around my room like an anxious hurricane, I was painfully aware of the cold spot in the room - my alarm clock grinning sardonically at me, proudly informing me that ‘late’ was going to describe both my arrival at Uni and my status as a very,  _ very  _ dead man when I got there. It was between the fight with my shirt and my quest to hop to the kitchen with one leg in my jeans that my eyes landed on my desk and my blood ran cold. The re-sit test stared back at me. The one due this morning. The absolutely  _ not  _ completed one. 

_ Shit. _

“Okay, okay, okay,” I began to anxiously mutter to myself as I paced back and forth, racking my brains for some solution. Running my hands through my hair as was my habit when I was nervous, Chase’s mark flared up suddenly and I hissed through my teeth. But then I stopped. The spark of pain had given way to a flash of inspiration, and I glanced from my hand to the paper and back again. 

_ It doesn’t all need to be right...just completed. And really, she can’t blame me for writing with the wrong hand, given what she did to my writing one.  _

I gritted my teeth. This was definitely not going to work.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The door was definitely judging me. 

I’d found time between two of my lectures (the earlier of which I’d burst into halfway through, garnering several puzzled looks and a narrow-eyed glare from Professor Chase) to hand in my work. And here I was, standing outside Professor Chase’s office, and I had the work in my hand.  _ So why have I forgotten how to knock on a door? _ I was well aware that her temper would likely only get worse the longer I waited, but...I glanced down at the paper, clutched tight in my shaking hands. The mark was still there, squatting obtusely against the white of my skin. The paper was....crumpled, to say the least.  _ Oh well _ , I thought, suddenly at peace with the certain doom that awaited me behind that door,  _ it can’t really look any worse, can it? _

Even with my sudden zen, I surprised myself with the decisiveness with which I suddenly moved my hand forward and rapped on the door. Too late, I realised that, instinctively, I’d used my right hand and a jolt of pain shot through me as the sharp sound rang out in the silent corridor, glancing off of the plaster-white walls but quickly swallowed by the thick carpet. Intaking a breath with a quiet hiss to keep from yelping, I tried to steady my nerves, which had decided to show up again and fill up my lungs, forcing me to take rapid, jittery breaths. And then I heard it again. The steady clack of heels on a hard floor. Rhythmic, like a pulse. Like a pendulum, swinging back and forth. Almost...mesmerising. I only just snapped out of it in time, shaking myself as the door swung open silently, Professor Chase’s slightly annoyed expression twisting into a quick smirk and then smoothing over into her neutral ‘teacher face’.

Christ, she was hot.

“Jackson, it’s good to see you again,” she said, smiling as she adjusted her wire rimmed glasses further up her nose, “Even though you were  _ spectacularly  _ late to my lecture this morning.”

I felt that sinking feeling again, faint whispers of shame drifting their smoky fingers across my mind.  _ She’s disappointed in you _ .  _ You’ve let her down. _ A burning blush of blood spilled under my skin, making my face hot and itchy. 

“No matter, it’s not like I expected a complete turnaround in one night,” she continued brightly, letting out a little chuckle as she leaned lightly on the side of the doorframe. The laugh released me from the hold of my hot flush, banishing the smokescreen from my mind with a little splash of sunshine. I started smiling dumbly, embarrassingly letting my taut muscles loosen. She smiled back and I felt a flutter in my chest. “All I need from you, young man,” she intoned sweetly, locking her eyes with mine and crossing her arms under her breasts, “Is that test I gave you yesterday.” The movement stretched her deep blue cardigan tighter across her shoulders and arms, revealing them to be unexpectedly toned, and creased her low-cut white blouse, which was...daringly-cut. Now I looked at it, I could swear she wasn’t wearing it during the lecture...did she put it on for me? What would that mean if she had? And why couldn’t I tear my eyes away? And why, in the name of sanity, was my stomach tying itself in knots every time the woman who had burned me smiled?

“Earth to Jackson? Is there something wrong, sweetie?”

I’d been staring.  _ Fuck _ .  _ Had she noticed? _ She smirked again, a nasty tug of the lip that reeked of smugness.  _ Ah. That’s a yes then. _ I opened my mouth slightly to begin speaking, but then decided against it, not trusting myself to string together a sentence properly. Instead, I awkwardly thrust my hand forward, presenting the creased pack of paper that contained a little bit of writing and a  _ lot _ of bullshit. Professor Chase raised her eyebrows slightly as she glanced towards it, then back to my face. Eyes flashing with exasperation, her smile faded and she stepped back into her study, beckoning me with one finger before turning around and starting to walk to her desk. I took a deep breath and stepped in.

And  _ wow _ . If I wasn’t desperately terrified of (and unbearably attracted to) the person who now lounged in a leather chair at the centre of the room, I would be overwhelmed. Several pieces of expensive looking furniture dotted the room, all cracked leather and mahogany (I think?) frames, including the two chairs either side of the desk - one for her to settle into, and the other, assumedly, for whatever prey she had decided to grill at that time. Books, thick tomes that looked centuries old, lined the shelves, likely responsible for the slightly musty smell that hung in the air, which was chill, and crisp, like a sheet of fresh paper printed authoritatively with regular, miniature text about something incredibly inconsequential. The other smell swimming through the air was burnt cinnamon and oranges, and I could see the source, a singular, lit candle perched alone on top of a coffee table in the corner of the room. The simple flame looked almost frozen, and my eyes caught on it, arrested as if I too had been drawn into its fossilised atmosphere. It looked so peaceful, like a moment captured in time - like a photograph of a birthday you couldn’t remember anymore but somehow still pulled at you, soothing the surroundings into a quiet blanket. One that you lightly touched the surface of, trying to remember how to breathe in a room suddenly devoid of air, trying to grasp at the faint strains of memory and weave them into some kind of cohesive experience, without completely knowing why. The flame flickered from its stillness, and brought me back around, and I realised that in spite of Chase’s predatory presence, I had, indeed, been overwhelmed. As I jumped slightly, whirling to turn my attention back to Chase, I heard another of her faint laughs, like the peal of tiny bells on a vacuous Christmas morning. 

“Something seems to have you...distracted this morning, Mr Jackson. Are you feeling quite alright?” Her voice was cold, hard, clear in the room, shredding the stuffy comfort that had hung like a gossamer veil in the air. She drummed her fingers lightly on the desk, several thin, silver rings catching the light as she did. “Well, young man? Do you have something to give me?”  _ Another kiss? _ I thought, half-bitterly, half-wistfully. Rousing myself, I walked further into the room, steps hesitant although my chest screamed at me to run to her, and my head screamed at me to run away. I met her eyes, which were clear today, silvery irises slowly being dragged up and down my body by hungry, ice-cold pupils. Gulping anxiously, I placed the paper on the desk and slid it towards Professor Chase, who was curled, panther-like, in her chair. She pulled it the rest of the way towards her with a single finger, failing, or perhaps unwilling, to mask the expression of excitement on her face. An expression which, as she flicked through the first pages, darkened, until, apparently fed-up, she shoved it to the side of the desk and looked up at me with a glare. Moments passed, time once again slowing to a treacle-like drip.

_ I should say something. _

“I uhm...I had to fill it out with the wrong hand. Because...you know…” I gestured weakly at my burnt hand, my voice, already cracked and weak, trailing off as I quailed under her unrelenting look of exasperation and anger. And so we lapsed into silence again, an uncomfortable one, full of panicked thoughts and nervous sweating. When she broke the swelling quiet, it was with a growling whisper that rippled through the frigid air.

“Do you mean to tell me, Jackson,” rising from her chair slowly as she spoke, “That despite our little talk yesterday and despite me doing my best to... _ imprint  _ the value of hard work on you...you took the easy way out?” Rounding the edge of her desk, she half-sat/half-leaned against the carved wood, facing me. Holding onto the edge with a white-knuckled grip, she sighed, letting her features relax even as the rest of her body stayed locked and tense. “Sit down, Jackson.” A simple command, made with a straight face and a flat voice. And yet, this was somehow worse than the voice that trembled with rage, by virtue of how completely opposite it was to those hands, which even now twitched and flexed against the desk as if holding back a multitude of desperate actions.

I sat down.

Now, you might think that this was good, right? I’ve already been in a situation like this, with her standing over me, so it was unlikely there were any more surprises coming, and, as an added bonus, there was no risk of my legs giving out under me. Unfortunately, as I semi-confidently settled into the oddly unyielding seat and looked up at Professor Chase, the light from her windows hit her back, lighting her up from behind and I died a very small death as I felt my breath disappear. She was an angel, burning with a ghostly corona of soft light and meandering dust particles and the unyielding pressure she exerted on the room. A few rays were tangled in her hair, in the loose threads on the right shoulder of her cardigan, somehow in her eyes, and whispered in the silent room, whispers of guitar chords, and campfires, and strawberries that ate the same sunlight as those stained glass irises. Beautiful. She was...beautiful. And then her hands twitched again, and she started to talk again, imperious and neutral.

“You tried to trick me, Jackson. I don’t appreciate that kind of behaviour. And, to make it worse,” she said, picking up the paper and dangling it in front of my face like it was offending evidence of me having broken the law, “You didn’t learn a lesson from yesterday.” Cowed, I hung my head and started to mumble something vaguely like an excuse, before I felt her suddenly shift, heard the movement of her arm through the air, felt the sudden stop and the tiny rush of air ruffle my hair. My eyes snapped up to hers, mouth drying suddenly as I discerned her hand shaking, centimetres from head, in my peripheral vision. Her eyes were closed, her face was scrunched up, her chest rising and falling rapidly with short, heavy breaths.

“Just...shut up. Shut up Jackson.” I was perfectly still, rooted in fear of the hand that she now retracted to her chest, clenched into a fist. Breathing out slowly, her hands unclenched and she laid them on her lap, slightly creasing the long, navy skirt that she was wearing. When she opened her eyes, they were boiling with rage, black pupils swelling to swallow the silver clarity of her irises. When she spoke, it was halting. Clipped. Smouldering. “I’ve...heard enough excuses. Excuses are-”

“Pathetic.” Interrupting, momentarily giving fewer fucks than a Vestal Virgin, I stared back into her eyes, challenging, baiting, waiting for my downfall. This I could deal with. Burning anger, raised hands. This, I was familiar with.

“...What?” Her eyes were glazed over, hazy with a sudden shift of tone, and her hands clenched fistfuls of her skirt.

“Excuses are pathetic, Professor Chase. Aren’t they?”

“That’s...right, young man. You did listen yesterday, it appears.”

“Of course Professor. You were very...engaging.” Her face twitched, shifting quickly into a terse smile as her fingers flexed and lay relaxed on her lap again. She swung her right leg idly, watching me as the tip of her black boot brushed my shin, smiling wider as I twitched my leg away, my sudden resolve dissolving like sugar in hot coffee.

“I’m glad that I made an impression on you,” she cooed, flicking her eyes to my hands, folded in my lap. “Although, I do have to ask what...possessed you to try  _ this  _ on me.” She tapped the paper with one pale pink fingernail, cocking her head and letting her hair fall down the side of her shoulder, tumbling like so many ancient golden coins. I sank my gaze down to the side of the desk between her legs, face beginning to burn again.

“W-well, I...I didn’t manage to get the test done last night.” 

“I can see that Jackson. Why?” Her foot swung back to knock against the front of the desk, a hollow, warm sound that felt very much out of place in the dry-ice atmosphere between Chase’s eyes and my flushing face. As it did, she leaned forward slightly, and one of her hands moved forward to brush against, then bury itself in my hair, the fingers scratching against my scalp, sending bursts of electricity through me. I mouthed briefly before choking out my answer.

“I-I-I couldn’t concentrate.”

“No?” she asked, with exaggerated curiosity. “What could be distracting such a well-behaved young man like  _ you _ ,” drawing her nails through my hair, thinning it to a few aching strands between her fingertips and then letting it fall back to my head, “From doing the work that  _ I  _ set you?”

I barely registered her question. Feeling the empty space where her hand had been like a hole in my heart, I keened softly, and pushed my head towards her hand again, unconsciously desperate for that sweetly sinful contact. 

“M-more Professor.” I mumbled, eyes closed, voice half-drunk with stupor.

“Answer my question first, Jackson, then we’ll see about ‘more’.” Chase let her hand rest on the barest edge of my hair, teasing me with a tantalisingly electrical sensation. Hastily, I let the words spill out.

“I’m not sure Professor, I just...can’t keep working. My laptop....Youtube....” My voice trailed off into a shiver that rippled through my body. Almost instinctively, I crossed my legs tightly together and closed my eyes. Now immersed in an anticipatory darkness, I felt the last few chains of inhibition, the ones marked with things like  _ Dude, this is a really bad idea _ and  _ Seriously, stop _ , slip off of me, and that calm, zen feeling welled up again inside me, filling me up like chilled water. Gods it felt good. 

She tutted with faux sympathy, ghosting her fingertips over the edge of my ear and cheek, around to the edge of my lips. With my eyes closed, my brain was going into overdrive, grasping desperately at sensation, clinging onto the faintest touch or sound and intensifying it, pumping blood into my face and making the trail of Chase’s fingers tingle and burn like a wildfire. My lips parted slightly as I began to pant, feeling the sharp nails pushing into the skin just outside of my mouth. Letting out a faint groan, I pushed my fists deeper into my lap, masking the shaking of my hands as well as the....situation that was arising in my jeans. Her voice came, seemingly, from everywhere at once, projecting into my empty, expectant head.

“Youtube and your laptop, hmm? Well, young man, at least you’re...straightforward. And straightforward is  _ good _ ,” she continued cheerfully. “It makes you easier to... _ fix _ .” The emphasis in her voice was so visceral that I flinched as the words jumped out of her mouth. The nail on her forefinger scraped along my lip, then pulled it down and out slowly. My eyes opened, my eyes starved for the sight of the woman who held me on the tip of her finger, and I just  _ barely _ caught an expression of curiosity, tenderness and...something else, something that my hormonally-addled brain pounced on, and clutched to itself. Her eyes met mine, and the tenderness melted away immediately; her nails scraped against my skin as she whipped her hand back. Faster than a drop of quicksilver, her arm shot back out and into my hair, and she grabbed a fistful of curls on the side of my head. I barely had time to let out a panicked gasp before she clapped her hand over my mouth and hissed at me.

“Quiet, Jackson. Shut up, and this’ll be easy to fix. Keep talking...and we’ll see if that pretty mouth can be used for more important purposes.” Mouth sealed shut, I nodded my head and met her gaze with frantic, pleading eyes. The pain from the hair-pulling was eating away at my restraint, begging me to wince or, worse, moan, and the sensation of being silenced was doing...a lot to my stomach and my crotch. Blood pulsing in my head, pumping to other areas of my body, making me squirm. A bead of nervous sweat formed on my forehead. My chest rose and fell in the smallest ways I could manage, trying, as I was, to remain perfectly still. She removed her hand from my mouth, but wrenched my head to the side with her other, ripping a strangled whimper from my mouth, leaving the right side of my neck exposed and vulnerable, the skin suddenly tingling in expectation. The tingling erupting into a fizzing, popping shiver as Chase ran a finger down the side of my neck, brusquely pressing onto my carotid artery.

“It seems to me, sweetheart, that you’re having problems focusing.” A finger traced along the edge of my jaw with an appreciative murmur. “And that this...new issue is...hindering your improvement from yesterday, hmm?” A scratch along my collarbone, drawing a moan from me like a fish on a line. “So, Jackson, we need to fix you again, don’t we? We need to help you,” she continued, her voice softening and sweetening as she leaned in closer to my ear, “ _ Focus _ . So, how do we do that, hmm?” Her voice hummed into my ear, hitting me in such a way that I trembled and involuntarily tugged against her grasp, immediately regretting it as her fingers curled more tightly, gripping me even more painfully.

“I  _ ow-ow-ow Professor  _ don’t know Professor,  _ please Professor, that hurts _ .” Her hand stroked my cheek as mine crept their way along my thighs to grip onto my knees. 

“Well in that case, do you want your Professor to tell you what we’re going to do? It might turn into something that you can’t handle, Jackson.” Her voice was wheedling, taunting, her expression delighted, her lips slightly parted as they pressed against my ear. “I know what you  _ want _ , Jackson. I know what dirty, twisted thoughts run through your head and I’ve seen the way that you look at me. But I need you to focus for me, if you’re ever going to improve.” Her mouth ghosted kisses against my jawline as she worked her way to the exposed side of my neck. Eyes flashing evilly as they met mine, she drew back and spoke in that husky, burning voice, smouldering with unrestrained craving. “So keep quiet for me whilst I give you something to concentrate on.”

My body stiffened in surprise when her lips touched my neck.Then, blood pulsed to my face, my eyelashes fluttered and I let out a small whimper as that first intoxicating pinprick of mouth on skin, melted into a tingling warmth. Warmth that flashed and cooled almost instantly, churning and recycling itself like the swell of waves crashing onto a beach, pulsing like a heartbeat. I could feel her mouth moving over my neck, leaving a faint shine of saliva where she’d kissed, which chilled almost instantly, unbearably cold in contrast to the roving heat of her mouth. It was a couple of seconds before I found my voice again, too terrified to react at first as Chase’s mouth kissed up my neck, drawing a line from my collarbone to the bottom of my ear. 

And I almost spoke too.

I almost ended it then. I was a few moments away from planting my hands on her shoulders and pushing her away, raising my voice and telling her, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever came near me again, I’d get her fired. 

And then...yeah. She let her teeth brush against that spot. The one just under your ear, where your neck meets your jaw, where it seems like every damn nerve in your body swirls into a concentrated mess. The shivers-through-my-body one, the one that buzzes like a hive of bees when someone whispers in your ear. And as she grazed it, I gave up. I gave up the ghost of guilt, of  _ wrongness _ that was crying out inside me. Like Hope from Pandora’s box, my eyes, rolling backwards, caught it flitting away, a soft exhale from my mouth as I melted into depravity.

Time disappeared and the room followed, as well as every care and worry and itch and pain, vanishing as her kisses became more aggressive, shifting into bites and nips, eating away at me. Each place her mouth touched began to burn like a wildfire, a pulsing, heavy sensation of near euphoria. As my mind began to fuzz over, and the start of a moan began to swell in my throat, she bit down properly, and the flash of pain cut through the mists swallowing my brain. Like some kind of animal ripping into a corpse, her teeth worked away at my skin, rolling it between her jaws, licking over the bite marks she left, unrelenting, a tornado-like onslaught that, unconsciously, I bent towards, exposing more of my neck even as I held back moans of pain. Each spark of sensation lay, sizzling, on my skin, soon creating a roadmap of her ownership. The thought that she was marking me, owning me, crashed into my consciousness with the weight of a freight train, filling my body with that cold, calm sensation even as my stomach dropped and my crotch began to tingle, a pulse of blood rushing to solidify Chase’s control over me. But I stayed still, resisting the urge to cross my legs, to keen and bend forwards, to pull her lips onto mine, my lips that ached for her touch, tingling with expectation. I could feel her dragging my blood to the surface of my skin, tattooing me with pools of blood and bite marks.

When she finally drew away, my neck was crying out, as branded and red as my right hand - the evidence of Professor Chase’s assault on my decency plastered from my jaw to my collarbone like an exaggerated blush. As her lips left my skin and her fingers released my hair, I shuddered and twitched, lightning striking the sensitive marks on fire as I moved, and the cold air bit into my neck with almost as much ferocity as Chase had. She smiled, and wiped away a fragile string of saliva that had been lying across her chin before reaching out to touch her work. Swallowing my impulse to jump away by stretching my neck out farther, I let her fingers drift across the wasteland of my neck, ruined skin rippling with goosebumps, weightless with pleasure and heavy with guilt. 

“Good boy,” she smirked, and I let out a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding. The tenderness was back, words draping like a Band-Aid over my pain. Like a smiley-face plaster, the cheerful facade of her voice swept my pain under the rug, a placebo compliment to wash away any remaining resistance. I could feel it working, watching the last dregs of animosity towards this...crazed entity, who had me wrapped around their finger, disappear. And all that was left was her. Her and those hands. The tips of those fingers that tugged against my burning neck, the knuckles that brushed roughly over the bump of my pulsing artery, the palm that pressed down lightly under my chin, restricting my breathing just enough to make me whimper.

“I don’t think you moved for that entire time, did you, Jackson?” she teased, cocking her head to gaze at the second mark she’d made on me. “I’m very pleased with you.” At my shudder, she smiled sweetly and walked back around to the other side of her desk, steps methodical, gait unaffected by the taste of my skin in her mouth. As she settled into her quiet throne, the leather shifting and crunching like leaves, I let myself follow the inward pull of my chest, curling up defensively in the chair with my shoulders thrown forward. The hickey hissed and spat as I shifted, and I was barely able to strangle a whimper.

“Well, Jackson, I think that we’re done for today, don’t you? You’d best be getting to your next lecture now.” Her voice had taken on an air of indifference, and as I looked up from under my eyelashes, I saw that she’d gone back to looking over a sheaf of papers, and it seemed like her attention had completely left me. Eager not to provoke another attack, I got hesitantly to my feet, one hand wrapped around my neck, lightly cupping the mark in an attempt to...I don’t know, hide it? Protect it? I’d be lying if I said that I couldn’t feel the stirrings of some primal, possessive instinct in my gut, but I was doing my best not to think about it. Gingerly, I made my way around the back of the chair, and was doing my best to slink out unnoticed when her voice rang out again, making my neck prickle.

“I think you might be forgetting something, Jackson.” I stopped dead in my tracks, cheeks flushing red with a sudden rush of adrenaline. 

“Wh-what Professor?” I choked out.

“Face me.” Her tone brooked no argument, and, turning, I saw that her eyes were stoney-cold and boring into me. I gulped, opening my mouth to say something, but was quickly cut off by another curt order. “Shut up. Now, Jackson, take your hand off of your neck.” I nodded, lowering my shaking hand to my side and standing awkwardly, trying not to meet her eyes. “Look at me.” My eyes flicked up to hers, and stayed there, captivated, petrified. “I’ve taught you an important lesson today, wouldn’t you agree?” She hummed a little, letting her eyes drift down to my neck. It was all I could do to nod in assent and manage the shaking in my legs as much as I could. “And so, Mr Jackson,” she continued, voice softening to a deadly sweetness, “I think that you should thank me.”

“I’m...I’m sorry Professor?”

“Almost, Jackson. But I said to  _ thank _ me, not apologise. So do it. Now.” 

I tried to resist, but I only lasted about five seconds before the shadow of the silence bullied my mouth open. 

“Th-thank you Professor.”

She grinned a wicked grin, full of sharp teeth and satisfaction. 

“You’re welcome, young man. Work on that paper this evening, alright? I want it in tomorrow. This time, I won’t be so lenient. Understand?”

I nodded dumbly. This seemed to satisfy her enough for her to return her attention to the papers on her desk, and she waved me out with a disinterested flick of her hand. I stepped out, almost sleepwalking, head racing with panicked emotions and half-formed thoughts. As the door shut, I turned down the corridor, but I only made it three paces down the corridor, before I veered off into the wall, letting my temple rest against the cool plaster. I screwed my eyes shut. It was too much - I barely knew how I felt, let alone what to do. It was like I was trapped in a whirlpool, gradually swirling deeper and deeper into some hungry abyss. It was so tempting to just...give up and let myself be sucked down to the bottom, to exchange the burning in my muscles for a quick, freezing death, let my lungs give into the ceramic hands of whatever force was pushing my head below the water. 

_ How the fuck had I let this happen? _

Feeling a twisted sadness shift around in my gut, I let my body slump against the wall. I was in far,  _ far _ too deep now. The mark on my hand could have been argued as assault, but my neck? No-one was going to believe me. 

I wasn’t sure that I believed myself.

Then my eyes snapped open, my hand clapping to my neck. How the  _ actual _ fuck was I going to get through the rest of today with my neck looking like a raw steak? 

_ Shit. _

I was visiting my Mum’s house over the weekend. I was _not_ looking forward to that conversation.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh...yeah. Sorry. It's easy to procrastinate, and I've been sitting on this for the past 3 weeks. But! It's here now!  
> Once again, thank you for reading, and any comments, requests and criticism are more than welcome! The next chapter should be on the way shortly. Maybe in a week. Hopefully. 
> 
> Love ya!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading to the end!  
> Hey so...my first fanfic. Doubtless, this'll never be seen, but I saw a hole in the PJ smutscape and I'll be damned if I don't jump at the chance to fill it. I'm planning to make this an ongoing piece of work, with later chapters getting progressively smuttier, although I may have used up every metaphor in this chapter already - whoops.  
> Please, any constructive criticism would be massively appreciated - I really hope that anyone who finds this enjoys it, and if there're some areas to improve (of that, I have no doubt) I would love to hear advice. Additionally, any ideas about where to go from here would also be nice :)  
> Love ya!


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